Congressional Appropriators: Rating the “Third Party”

A practical reality of life on Capitol Hill can be summed up with a saying often attributed to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).  In his book, Worth the Fighting for, Sen. McCain writes that, “there are, it is often observed, three parties in Congress, Republicans, Democrats, and appropriators.”  Further explained by Barry Popik, a contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary (among others), the saying “means that ‘pork barrel’ spending is nonpartisan.”

Since 1989, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) has examined roll call votes to help identify which members of Congress have defended taxpayer interests and which have backed down on their promises of fiscal responsibility.  These ratings separate the praiseworthy from the profligate by evaluating important tax, spending, transparency, and accountability measures.

CCAGW rates members on a 1-100 percent scale.  Members are placed in the following categories:  0-19 percent, Hostile; 20-39 percent, Unfriendly; 40-59 percent, Lukewarm; 60-79 percent, Friendly; 80-99 percent, Taxpayer Hero; and 100 percent, Taxpayer Super Hero.

CCAGW also analyzes ratings based on party affiliation and House membership in the Republican Study Committee.  However, the votes of congressional appropriators—those whose assignment to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees empower them to control the purse-strings of the federal treasury—have never been specifically analyzed by CCAGW.

Until now.

Since CCAGW rates each session of Congress retrospectively, the most recent congressional ratings available are those from the two sessions (2015 and 2016, respectively) of the 114^th Congress.  For those two years, membership on the Appropriations Committees in the Senate and House consisted of the following senators and representatives.

To put these ratings in context, consider the following.  In 2015, all Republican senators averaged 93 percent, while Republican appropriators averaged slightly less than 88 percent.  At the same time, all Senate Democrats (including the Independents that caucus with them) scored an average rating of 5 percent, while Democratic appropriators rated an even less taxpayer-friendly average on only 1.5 percent.  In the House of Representatives, the 2015 average for all Republicans was 82 percent, while GOP appropriators fell behind, with an average rating of 74 percent.  House Democrats averaged a 4 percent rating that year, as their party’s appropriators actually bested them by some three-quarters of a point with an average of 4.762 percent.  Still, hardly a score to brag about.

In 2016, all Senate Republicans averaged 78 percent, while their appropriators scored an average rating of 68.25 percent.  That year, Senate Democrats averaged 15 percent, and Democratic appropriators fell slightly behind, with an average of slightly less than 13 percent.  In the House, all Republicans averaged a CCAGW rating of 87 percent, while GOP appropriators lagged behind with an average rating of 81.533 percent.   House Democrats, as a whole, averaged 6 percent; interestingly, their appropriators equaled the overall Democratic caucus average, at 6 percent, as well.

While there may not be concrete conclusions from these comparisons, it does appear that the “official” congressional spenders (the House and Senate appropriators) tend to vote less favorably, from the perspective of the taxpayer, than their non-appropriating counterparts.